Global meets local: typographic practices and the semiotic role of subtitling in the creation of parodies in Cypriot dialect on Internet texts

Abstract

The framework which governs subtitles and viewers’ comments is investigated in this study, through five film clips-parodies of the same movie, which are subtitled in the Cypriot dialect with different linguistic content every time. The study focuses on the semiotic role of subtitling and the examination of text content and meaning. Also, subtitle characteristics and typographic practices for the transcription of subtitles into a language system which lacks an official and widely accepted orthographic system are examined. As for the visual rendering of the Cypriot dialect in subtitling, the study proposes that the use of typography by fansubbers, facilitated by technology proliferation, often results in failure of legibility, cohesion and comprehension of the text, while projecting a sense of orality and improvisation. The main concluding remark is that subtitling is used as a semiotic tool in visual communication as it operates as a “semiotic switch” in the expected production of semiosis by the language of the text and the production of semiosis by the subtitles.

Keywords:

• subtitling
• mass culture
• parodies
• Cypriot dialect
• semiotics
• typography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Aspasia Papadima is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts at Cyprus University of Technology. She has been practicing graphic design as a consultant in major design assignments and as a graphic artist, exhibiting her artwork in international design exhibitions. Her research interests include typographic design, typographic rendering of the Cypriot dialect, visual language and technology, ephemeral design and vernacular typography, and urban graphic language. She is secretary of the Cyprus Semiotics Association.

Evangelos Kourdis is an Assistant Professor of Translation Semiotics in the Department of French Language and Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His scientific interests are mainly concentrated in the field of Sociosemiotics, Sociolinguistics, Language Ideology and Cultural Communication. He is vice president of the Hellenic Semiotic Society, member of the Hellenic Society for Translation Studies, delegate in Greece of the Société d’Etudes des Pratiques et Théories en traduction (SEPTET, France) and Review Editor of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics.

Notes

1. For O’Halloran (2005, 20), “[…] mode is used to refer to the channel (auditory, visual or tactile for example […] multimodality is used for discourses which involve more than one mode of semiosis”.

2. Although fansubbing originally started for anime programmes, eventually it has been widely used for any kind of programmes (see “Fansub”, Anime News Network, http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/lexicon.php?id=63, last update 4 January 2014).

3. The Austrian poet Ernst Jandl developed the art of “surface translation”, whereby the sounds of a poem in one language would be rendered into another – using words native to the target language or nonsense words in the target language – without regard to meaning (see Schreiber 1983).

4. In the Greek speaking part of Cyprus, there are two related language varieties, Modern Greek – the official language of state and the Cypriot dialect – mother tongue of Cypriots. Those two varieties coexist and are used at the same time. However, they have a different function and status. Modern Greek is taught in all levels of education as the principal language. It is used in formal communication circumstances, in written discourse and the mass media. The Cypriot dialect is used mainly in oral speech and in informal communication among the Cypriots (Karyolaimou 2001, 180).

5. See http://hitlerparody.wikia.com/wiki/Constantin_Film (last update 29 December 2013).

6. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ens_jHYjOYc (last update 4 December 2013).

7. For the phenomenon of the “intersemiotic translation”, see Jakobson ([1959] 2001, 139).

8. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5fjkD5nRw (last update 28 December 2013).

9. See http://www.chlorakasefimerida.com/Chlorakas%20agria_chlorida.htm (last update 1 February 2014).

10. It is worth noting at this point that the contrastive relationship has been widely studied by the founder of the French semiotic school Algirdas-Julien Greimas (1966) and is considered a main factor of meaning production in narratives.

11. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7FHQUJsSeg (last update 2 January 2014).

12. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U515v5kN9c (last update 2 January 2014).

13. This rendering of obscene language in subtitles is not frequent. Nornes (2004, 465) mentions that in the subtitling of the Japanese film Tenamonyya Connection (Produced by Yamamoto Maashi 1991), “[o]bscene expressions like Konchikusho! and konoyaro! are translated!%&$#!@!!”.

14. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8et9YIc7ow (last update 2 February 2014).

15. BBC’s Online Subtitling Editorial Guidelines (Williams 2009), http://www.ufu.gr/book/export/html/296, Channel 4 subtitling guidelines for foreign programmes.

16. BBC’s Online Subtitling Editorial Guidelines (Williams 2009), http://www.ufu.gr/book/export/html/296, Channel 4 subtitling guidelines for foreign programmes.

17. See http://www.channel4.com/media/documents/corporate/foi-docs/SG_FLP.pdf (last update 8 March 2014).

18. See http://www.ufu.gr/book/export/html/296 (last update 10 March 2014).

19. Last update, 5 January 2014, for all comments on texts.